The Return Myth that destroyed a culture...

There are actually two endings to the Quetzalcoatl story. In one, Ce Acatl immolates himself in a pyre and his heart ascends to heaven, turning into the Morning Star, Venus. Here the Plumed Serpent triumphs in a transcendental act, like Christ ascending into the clouds. But like Christ, Quetzalcoatl is a failed messiah. He has to die to complete his mission and, well, quite frankly, we are never certain he does complete it. We are left to rely on faith in a miraculous solution, a mysterious ending. Parzival´s story, on the other hand, is about direct experience of a mystery that grounds and guides humanity through its entire course of evolution.

In the second version, after a humiliating defeat in a magical contest with the sorcerer Tezcatlipoca, the Christ-like Ce Acatl departs from the Toltecs and lives among the Maya, propounding the usual good-guy message to them, before sailing off to the East on a raft of serpents. Here the return myth comes into play.

The prediction of Quetzalcoatl´s return may have been attached to an historical event by Toltec seers, perhaps a war between two bands of shamans, and passed on to the Aztecs when they invaded and overthrew Toltec civilization between 950 and 1250 CE. I classify this return myth as an instance of the Master Scam used by the Toltec sages to insure the downfall of the people who overthrew them. All messianic tales are examples of the Master Scam, but in this case the plot seems to have been deliberately implanted in an enemy culture, whereas generally a whole culture or race will be converted to such a messianic belief system by another culture or race attempting to absorb it. Conversion to a messianic agenda usually profits the conquering culture or race, because messianism is always aligned with an agenda of perpetration and domination, but for the Aztecs it was their undoing.

Granted, it always takes a great deal of intimidation and physical coercion to get people to adopt such myths—consider the history of Christianity in Europe. But I would guess that the Aztecs were largely tricked into adopting the return myth by the people they defeated. They were certainly not forced into it by another people who wished to conquer them. In the end, the myth itself conquered the people who adopted it. It worked like a post-hypnotic suggestion, causing the entire Aztec culture, and especially the ruling class, to collapse psychically when faced with the return of Quetzalcoatl in the guise of Cortez. This is unique, and quite bizarre, but so is just about everything else we learn about the rise of the Aztecs and the conquest of Mexico by Cortez.

As a mythologist, I maintain that the return of Quetzalcoatl was not mistaken by Montezuma and his people. The coming of Cortez was the predicted return, the enactment of a curse planted in the Aztec mind by the superior savvy of the Toltecs. I consider it mistaken to link the coming of Quetzalcoatl with the 2012 endtime, because the return has already happened. It´s over and done, having been enacted in what is perhaps the most bizarre historical drama in human history, or at least in recent history. However, the 2012 endtime may be the moment when we finally come to understand what did happen in the conquest of Mexico.

People continue to look for a post-Conquest return of the Plumed Serpent, or declare that it has already happened. One of countless 2102 sites claims that Toltec and Maya prophecies of the return of Quetzalcoatl "clearly foretell the coming of the Bab and Baha'u'llah, the twin Prophet Founders of the Baha'i Faith." According to Olin Karch, author of "Prophetic Dates Given by Toltecs and Aztecs," the first of thirteen heavens began in 1168, an alternative date assigned to the historical avatar of Quetzalcoatl by Mayanist Herbert Spinden. The 13th era of 52 years computing from this date was 1844-1896, when Baha'i arose. This is yet more messianic hype for the Master Scam, the spiritual affliction of the Piscean Age.

The Toltec seers were brilliant diviners and consummate magicians who perhaps saw through the delusion of messianic expectation along the lines I am suggesting here. The predicted return involved a sacrificial religion of male-warrior dominance that mirrored Aztec society down to its terrible, twisted core. You could say that Montezuma met his daimonic counterpart in another warrior dedicated to a religion of dominance, Hernando Cortez. The expectation of Quetzalcoatl's return set the Aztec chief up for a game of powerlessness, despair, and confusion, easily won by his alien double. Somehow, the Toltec seers saw that the Aztecs would be defeated by a belief system uncannily similar to their (the Aztecs') own—or defeated by their own beliefs, transposed into a different frame, personified by different players. What a fantastic twist.

http://www.metahistory.org/TabletDestiny.php

Interesting, thanks.

Radical. I hope you are well, Iv been called back into 'life' to work with the children in our big extended family, so Iv only been able to visit randomly. Ill be moving there with them soon, so Ill probably loose contact with my favorite boards like this eventually, but I suppose thats life. Your like the gatekeeper of this one though, so its nice to see your familiar wolfy avatar.